The critical importance of experimentation in biomarker-based trophic ecology.

Autor: Galloway, Aaron W. E., Budge, Suzanne M.
Předmět:
Zdroj: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences; 8/3/2020, Vol. 375 Issue 1804, p1-8, 8p
Abstrakt: Fatty acids are commonly used as biomarkers for making inferences about trophic relationships in aquatic and soil food webs. However, researchers are often unaware of the physiological constraints within organisms on the trophic transfer and modification of dietary biomarkers in consumers. Fatty acids are bioactive molecules, which have diverse structures and functions that both complicate and enhance their value as trophic tracers. For instance, consumers may synthesize confounding non-dietary sourced markers from precursor molecules, and environmental conditions also affect fatty acid composition. There is a vital need for more research on the uptake and transfer of trophic biomarkers in individual organisms in order to advance the field and make meaningful use of these tools at the scale of populations or ecosystems. This special issue is focused on controlled feeding experiments on a diverse taxonomic breadth of model consumers from freshwater, marine and soil ecosystems with a goal of creating a more integrated understanding of the connection between consumer physiology and trophic ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index